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BOT talks meeting needs of Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act has prompted the Cal State University to recruit more nurses.

At Tuesday’s CSU Board of Trustees meeting, the Board discussed the CSU’s need to alleviate impacted nursing programs and accommodate the new demands created by the Affordable Care Act.

The Board discussed possible changes and improvements for the CSU’s nursing programs, including finding ways to attract new nursing faculty to alleviate impacted programs and improving communication between the CSU’s nursing programs and hospitals.

“Primarily, it’s a lack of funding, a shortage in nursing faculty and [an] insufficient number of clinical training experiences that keep nursing enrollments too low for us to meet our nation’s healthcare needs,” said Christine Mallon, assistant vice chancellor for Academic Programs and Faculty Development.

Currently, there are more than 3 million nurses in the nation, but an estimated 1.2 million additional nurses will be needed by 2020, Mallon said.

Mallon said that the nonprofit Institute of Medicine recommends that 80 percent of registered nurses be trained at a bachelor’s degree level and that the number of nurses who hold doctorate degrees should be doubled.

“Nurses represent the largest segment of the healthcare workforce,” she said.

Cal State Long Beach nursing professor Margaret Brady also said that many hospitals now require nurses to have a bachelor’s degree.

Mallon said that community colleges that offer associate degrees in nursing are a great resource pool for the CSU to attract nursing faculty and encourage students to earn a bachelor’s degree. She said that there are not enough nurses extending their education to a bachelor’s degree once they earn an associate degree.

Mallon said that the CSU should invest in clinical training opportunities that are required for nursing students to earn their licenses.

She also said that the cost of resources, such as simulation labs, and a high student-to-faculty ratio make the CSU nursing programs needy for funding.

“The state doesn’t fund at the level of the cost that’s required,” she said. “To attract and obtain future faculty, we need to be able to pay faculty salaries that compete with what nurses can earn in clinical practice and in administration roles.”

Mallon said that it is difficult to attract nursing faculty because they make more money by going into clinical practice instead. More nursing faculty opt for clinical practice, she said, despite the fact that the CSU is open to negotiating salary.

Brady said that nurses who are faculty members tend to also work at a hospital or another healthcare agency.

She also said that nurses tend to leave their jobs as faculty members to generate a higher salary elsewhere and keep up with the high cost of living in California.

When it comes to nurses making a decision between which job to choose, Brady said that nurses have to ask themselves, “What’s best for me and for my family?”

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